One of the useful items for small applications of paints and chemicals are pressurized aerosol containers. Briefly, the aerosol container contains a propellant such as butane or propane and a paint which contains solids and liquids. The liquids include hazardous solvents such as methyl ethyl ketone, acetone xylene, toluene and the like which make the proper and safe disposal of the used aerosol container difficult. That is, even though the aerosol container is spent and no longer useful, a portion of the hazardous and non-hazardous materials remains in a gaseous phase within the aerosol container. Since only a small portion of the contents is hazardous, the separation and removal of the hazardous substances for separate disposal would be environmentally beneficial.
The present invention provides a method of separating and disposing of the hazardous substances. It also provides a two-stage capsule filter which allows users of pressurized aerosol containers to separate the hazardous materials from the non-hazardous materials quickly and easily, so that he or she can safely dispose of the empty metal aerosol canister without allowing the hazardous contents of the canister to escape into the environment. The filtering is done with two filters neither of which alone could effectively remove the hazardous solvents from the gaseous mixture.